Candace Robb - A Gift Of Sanctuary

Pulling the hood of his cloak over his comb- and trinket-twisted hair and fastening it against the wind, the old man rode out on to the sands. He was about to nudge his steed to a gallop when the beast shied. God’s grace was upon the man who lay there, that the horse had brought his hoofs down on the bare sand and not on the prostrate form. The old man dismounted to examine this booty of the sea, discovered it was blood, not seaweed that darkened the young man’s hair. He glanced round, wary of trespassing on another’s battle ground, but the mist and blowing sand prevented him from seeing far. The roar of the breakers muted the sound of any who might share the beach with him.

The old man crouched beside the one sprawled on his back in the sand and studied him. One blood-encrusted hand still held a dagger. Blood darkened the edge of the man’s sleeve — another’s blood, for the stains higher up were spatters. A deep thrust into the gut or the chest might cause such a flood. The white-haired man guessed that someone had died this day, at this man’s hands. It had not been an easy victory; a bruise on this one’s throat already darkened and he bled freely from an almost severed ear. It might well be beyond Brother Samson’s skill to repair the latter.

But God had crossed their paths today for a reason. The horse was to carry the wounded man to safety. And the dead man? There was no time to look for him. The man here before him might bleed to death while Dafydd or his retainers searched the sands and the caves, or the other’s friends might fall upon them. And for all this, he might find no other. No. A search was a waste. Better to attend the living one to whom he had been led.

Grunting as his legs protested straightening, Dafydd whistled for his horse. As the beast crowded near, the white-haired man praised God that his was a short, sturdy Welsh horse and not a destrier. He rearranged the wrapped harp slung beside his saddle, then crouching once more, found the centre of the wounded man’s weight and heaved him across his shoulder, eased up, and slid the man across the horse’s wide back. Taking the reins in hand, the old man nodded to his horse, and the two figures headed down Whitesands towards St Patrick’s Chapel and the track up on to St David’s Head. The beast’s gait grew jerky as he climbed the rocks above the breakers. The injured man moaned, ‘Tangwystl.’

Ah. So they had not fought over smuggled treasures, but the love of a woman. Tangwystl. The white-haired man smiled and softly began to sing:

The wind shivered the gorse and whipped the old man’s cloak round him as if it were a fury. Dafydd bent his head into the tempest, his song stilled with the effort to breathe, and he squinted to see the track before him. He heard the horsemen before he saw them. His six men, their heads low against their mounts, eyes half-closed against the wind, came thundering past, down to the beach Dafydd had just deserted. He turned back in wonderment. What did they pursue? He had left them far up at Carn Llidi.

Shielding his eyes, Dafydd made out three, no, four riders beginning the ascent from Whitesands. In pursuit of the wounded man, were they? Did they not see Dafydd’s men descending upon them?

With a prayer for the souls of the fools down below, Dafydd continued up the rocky headland, to a cluster of boulders that shielded him and his burden from the wind. He took a linen cloth from his scrip, bound it round the injured man’s head to stanch the bleeding. The man moaned, shivered as if a surge of pain followed the binding, then was still. So still Dafydd leaned close to hear his breath. Rasping, difficult, but there. God was not ready to take this man.

It was not long before Dafydd’s men reappeared, riding proudly. Madog, the talker, leapt from his steed and hurried forward.

‘Master Dafydd, are you injured?’

The wind sucked at Dafydd’s breath. He shook his head. ‘We must ride quickly.’

Madog lifted the injured man’s head, eyes widening as he saw the blood that already soaked half the bandage. ‘Who is he?’

Who indeed? What should Dafydd call him, this bleeding soul God had entrusted to him? ‘A pilgrim.’

Madog’s dark brows came together in doubt, but he did not argue. ‘The four we routed,’ he said, ‘they wore the livery of Lancaster and Cydweli.’

‘My pilgrim has powerful enemies.’

‘What would you have us do?’

‘He has lost much blood. Let us sprout wings to fly him to Brother Samson’s healing hands.’ Dafydd handed Madog the reins of his burdened horse, slipped his harp from the saddle. ‘You ride with the pilgrim. I shall ride your steed.’

MARCH 1370

Owen Archer ached from days of riding. The journey into southern Wales was proving a painful lesson in how sedentary he had become in York; though all men said marriage and family softened a man, as captain of the Archbishop of York’s retainers and one who trained archers, Owen had thought himself an exception. The ride was also a reminder of how solitary was a winter journey, no matter how large the company. With head tucked deep inside a hood that dripped incessantly, a rider limited conversation to the bare necessities.

Most riders, that is. Two of his companions behaved otherwise. Even now, as they made their way through a forest of limbs bent, twisted and snapped by a relentless gale, where they must guide their horses and be ready to duck and sidestep trouble, their voices rose in argument.

‘The wind at home is never so fierce,’ Sir Robert D’Arby shouted.

‘It is so and more, Sir Robert,’ Brother Michaelo retorted. ‘You do not enjoy being a wayfaring man, is all. I for one see no difference between this weather and that of the North Country.’

‘You dare to speak to me of being a wayfaring man — you, who think silk sheets and down cushions are appropriate for a pilgrim? I have endured years of real pilgrimage.’

‘Yes, yes, the Holy Land, Rome, Compostela, I know,’ Brother Michaelo said. ‘There are worse sins in life than fine bedclothes.’ He bowed his head and tugged his hood farther over his face.

‘Sybarite,’ Sir Robert muttered.

Owen thought his father-in-law and the archbishop’s secretary worse than warring children in their ceaseless bickering over trifles. He did his best to ignore them. Geoffrey Chaucer, on the other hand, rode close to them and listened with a smile.

‘You find them amusing,’ Owen said. ‘I would prefer them muzzled.’

Geoffrey laughed. ‘Most of their arguments are predictable and repetitive, it is true, but at times they delight with their inventiveness. I wait for such moments. Listen — Sir Robert has changed the subject.’

‘Would that we had left earlier so we might reach the shrine of St David on his feast day,’ Owen’s father-in-law said.

‘We would have ridden to our deaths in a winter storm and never reached St David’s,’ Michaelo said while holding a branch aside for his elderly antagonist.

Geoffrey nodded. ‘It is a game to the monk, this argument.’

Owen understood that. And yet not entirely a game. The monk worried that Sir Robert would prevail and have him decked out in the rough robe of a pilgrim, sleeping on the cold, damp, root-infested earth of the forest. Sir Robert wore a long, russet-coloured robe of coarse wool with a cross on the sleeve, and a large round hat with a broad brim turned up at the front to show his pilgrim badges, of which he was justly proud, particularly the scallop shell. Hanging from his neck was a pilgrim’s scrip, a large knife, a flask for water and a rosary, and tied across his saddle was a bourdon. Not that he needed the purse of essentials and the walking stick, being well provisioned and on horseback.